I've got a lot of pals that maintain a vegan diet. Some do it for ethical reasons. Others dig it simply because removing animal products from the menu has had a tremendous effect on their overall health. Hell, I recently started a diet where I've had to eliminate carbs, reduce my meat intake, and take the majority of my proteins from nuts and other sources that haven't mooed, clucked or swam at one point or another. In just a few weeks, I found that switching it up provided me with more energy, less trouble with my guts and a significant amount of weight loss, thanks to my body entering ketosis.

Yet, as much as I respect veganism, and the various shades of vegetarianism out there, I have to agree with a recent op-ed from the aptly named Isabella Tree, published in The Guardian: eating plants isn't going to save us from global warming or other environmental disasters.

From The Guardian:

Much has been made of the methane emissions of livestock, but these are lower in biodiverse pasture systems that include wild plants such as angelica, common fumitory, shepherd’s purse and bird’s-foot trefoil because they contain fumaric acid – a compound that, when added to the diet of lambs at the Rowett Institute in Aberdeen, reduced emissions of methane by 70%.

In the vegan equation, by contrast, the carbon cost of ploughing is rarely considered. Since the industrial revolution, according to a 2017 report in the science journal Nature, up to 70% of the carbon in our cultivated soils has been lost to the atmosphere.

From afar, and even from its own dark and derelict lower floors, this abandoned paper mill in Sweden is much like any other disused factory. But found upstairs, on the second level up, is an amazing "garden" space, half-recovered by nature. Redditor IEatBasil, posting in the marvelous Abandonedporn forum, describes it as "probably the most beautiful place I've ever been to."

This whole place was magical! It's a big, overgrown paper mill in Sweden surrounded by trees. The first floor and the basement are like the usual amazing abandoned factories. But when you climb up on the steep, rusty stairs who's probably seen better days, you enter this magical garden full of vivid colours. It's astonishingly high up to the roof and the huge windows fill up the room with sunlight. It was truly amazing to be there.

And besides it there's this that chimney you can walk into that stands almost 60 meters tall!

Photoset. What a splendid place to bug out to when the nukes fly and civilization collapses. Read the rest